Scientists have been warning for a long time. The planet can suffer a collapse in a short period of time with catastrophic consequences for humanity. Alarmism or reality?
The rise in temperatures that the Earth is experiencing is putting the Atlantic Circular Current (AMOC) at risk.
A year ago, a group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen published a study in which they assured that the AMOC will collapse between 2025 and 2095 with “95% certainty.” Scientists were talking at the time that “it will most likely happen in 34 years, in 2057.”
Recent studies have worryingly lowered the estimate of this collapse and there are already experts who are talking about the beginning of the next decade. The Atlantic Circular Current is the process by which warm waters move towards the poles where they cool to freeze.
The planet’s climate system partly depends on this current, since it works as a heat pump or heat sink. The collapse of the AMOC is already being noticed and if it collapses it could cause glaciation at the poles that would be a catastrophe.
Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth system analysis at the German Climate Impact Research Institute, has launched a worrying message online, pointing out that the collapse of the Atlantic Circular Current could arrive in the next decade.
Rahmstorf in a study published in Oceanographydetails: “The Atlantic meridional circulation has a major impact on climate, not only in the North Atlantic but globally. Paleoclimatic data show that it has been unstable in the past, causing some of the most severe climate changes. These inflection points are known to be dramatic and abrupt. These instabilities are due to two different types of tipping points, one linked to amplified feedback in large-scale salt transport and the other to convective mixing that drives the flow. “They pose a significant risk of abrupt ocean circulation and climate change as we push our planet out of the stable Holocene climate and into uncharted waters.”
“Maybe we should start taking survival seriously,” Antonio Turiel, a scientific researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the CSIC, has also pointed out online.
Could this possible collapse be stopped? Is the planet facing its last chance? Rahmstorf understands that “the only action we can take to minimize the risk is to phase out the use of fossil fuels and stop deforestation as quickly as possible. If we can reach zero emissions, global warming will stop within a few years, and the sooner it happens , the lower the risk of surpassing devastating tipping points. It would also minimize many other losses, damages and human suffering resulting from the regular impacts of global warming (e.g. heat waves, floods, droughts, crop failures, wildfires, increase). of sea level), which are already happening around us even without the passage of time.
